Dragon Ball Z’s Saddest Arc Still Devastates 36 Years Later — Toriyama Draws Tragedy Like No One Else, Not Even Oda
Thirty-six years later, Dragon Ball Z’s Raditz Saga still lands the hardest—Goku’s shocking death packs more emotion than any planet-busting showdown.
Dragon Ball Z starts with a gut punch most shows would save for a finale. About 36 years ago, the series opened with the Raditz saga, a tiny arc with no planet-killing beam in sight and yet somehow one of the most devastating runs the anime ever delivered. Short, sharp, and mean: it kills Goku almost immediately, and it still stings.
What makes the Raditz saga hit so hard
Other DBZ arcs are all about the apocalypse. This one isn’t. The stakes are purely emotional, and that’s exactly why it lands.
- It’s brief: just 12 chapters, right at the top of DBZ, before you’ve had any time to settle in.
- It breaks the myth: Dragon Ball had spent years building Goku into the guy who always finds a way. Then DBZ opens and suddenly he’s dead in the first saga.
- No villain softening: there’s no tragic flashback for Raditz, no attempt to make you feel for him. He shows up, he’s awful, and that’s that.
- The scene is savage: Goku clamps onto Raditz and refuses to let go so Piccolo can fire a beam straight through both of them. The Z Fighters watch their indestructible friend die in front of them. Goku uses his last bit of strength to save his own kid. That level of vulnerability from him? Rare.
- It’s intentional and abrupt: Goku’s death exists to clear space for Gohan to train and step up as a successor. The presentation is almost casual, which weirdly makes it more powerful.
- It doesn’t milk the moment: compare it to One Piece, where Ace’s death is built up over an entire arc and even a ship like the Going Merry gets a full-on farewell. DBZ just drops the hammer, no preamble.
- Yes, Goku comes back. No, that doesn’t blunt the impact. In the moment, it’s a real loss with no safety net in sight.
Why the suddenness works
Akira Toriyama is very good at the kind of tragedy that feels like real life: it happens fast, without a big on-ramp, and leaves everyone in shock. The Raditz saga is basically a live demonstration of that idea. There’s no slow swell of violins or lengthy foreshadowing. It just happens, and you’re left to sit with it.
Three decades later, still brutal
Even now, that ending haunts a lot of Dragon Ball fans. The series moved on, Goku is very much alive and punching galaxies, but the way DBZ starts — with a desperate father making a split-second call — never stopped being rough.
If you want to revisit it (and maybe yell at your screen all over again), Dragon Ball is streaming on Crunchyroll in the US.